


Statistical Outlier

by HannahKotoba



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I don't know what to tag this as except sad, One Shot, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 10:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17363936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahKotoba/pseuds/HannahKotoba
Summary: She never wanted to hear the name "Otto" again.





	Statistical Outlier

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place some unspecified amount of time after the plot of ITSV.

Well, it wasn’t the first time she had to start from square one.

She should count her blessings, really. The truck that hit her somehow managed to not only not kill her, but leave her with injuries that were relatively minor compared to what could have happened. And because the Spider-people saw her get hit and presumed her as dead, nobody was looking for her to haul her off to jail with the rest of Kingpin’s inner circle. All she had to do was lay low for a while, wait for her body to mend and for another villain (there was always another villain) to capture the public’s attention, and she could start over again.

Still, it was frustrating to have gotten so close. Her theory was proven, contact _could_ be made with other dimensions- but it was all spiders that came through. She didn’t even get to see the results of the Fisk family’s DNA, having cut her losses and run when she saw they were losing the fight.

At least she had the data from all of those experiments- though Spider-Man had stolen her computer, she managed to sneak back and retrieve all of her belongings from her office before the Alchemax building was investigated, including her notebooks. And though it would be far too costly to rebuild from stage one again, she was able to slip into the destroyed Collider site and scavenge some of the rarer essential materials.

The Collider 2.0 would be smaller, less ambitious; but she would have complete control over it.

And what a breath of fresh air that would be. Kingpin was by far the worst part of her time at Alchemax. Like every man she had ever met, he relished having control over others, and though he didn’t understand the science behind her project, he had all these ideas of his own on how it should work. It was a running theme in her life- people deciding _they_ were suddenly the experts on _her_ and _her_ life and _her_ projects, deciding what they should do, think, _be_ -

Olivia slammed one of her tentacles into the ground at that thought and relished the feeling of sheer _power_. Oh, people could boss around little nerdy Octavius, but nobody in their right minds gave directions to Doctor Octopus.

* * *

The new Collider wasn’t powerful enough to _completely_ break the barrier between dimensions; it could _just_ make it thin enough to provide a window into said alternate universes. Even that took an incredible amount of energy, which would be noticed once she started siphoning it out of the power grid. There would be a very short period of time between her starting the machine and Spider-Man coming to investigate, she knew perfectly well.

But that was all she needed.

Olivia pulled hair from her head (she meant to only pull a strand or two, but her hair’s refusal to be tamed by any brush meant it came out in more of a clump) and placed it in the container. Finally, she would be able to see what her alternate selves were like. Was she happier? Healthier? Did she go through the same things in that timeline? Yes, the possibilities were infinite; but this Collider would probably find the universes most similar to her own first, so she was fully prepared to be staring slightly different versions of herself in the face.

Deep breath. One last check of all the machinery. One last calibration of the equipment. And then, it began.

Olivia peered at the screen in fascination as another universe came into view, laser-focused on her project, blocking out the tremors the machine was causing. It took a few moments longer, but the machine re-adjusted and brought into focus a science lab. She frowned as the monitor tracked an old, balding man. Had she miscalculated after all?

Another scientist, this one a woman (blonde, and with much shorter hair, but Olivia leaned in nonetheless, knowing from the Peter that arrived from the first collider that her alternates could look very different to herself), came into view. She came up beside the first scientist and put a hand on his shoulder. “ _Good work today, Otto._ ”

_Otto_.

A wave of white hot fury shot through her, hands curled so tight her nails might draw blood, arms jutting out from her back in straight lines. _Otto_. It made her stomach curl and her jaw clench and her nose scrunch up. _Otto_. Of all the universes to land on, all the echoes of herself across the multiverse, and this was the first result. _Otto Octavius._

The worst possible version of herself.

Olivia took a deep breath and calmed her trembling hands, fingers flying across the keyboards to lock onto the next universe. Sure, with infinite possibilities, it was inevitable there was a universe where she never became Olivia, she just hadn’t expected it to be her first result. No matter. She had seen all she needed to from this dimension.

Nothing good could come from a universe with an _Otto_ Octavius.

In the second universe, Olivia once again had a moment of concern as the machine showed her Spider-Man. She looked around in the background, but saw no sign of herself in the background. And then the Spider-Man unfurled long mechanical spider-limbs. Oh! _She_ must have been the one who was bitten by the spider in this dimension. _Fascinating_.

She took a minute to watch this version of herself, climbing buildings and slinging webs. The free range of movement allowed by the mix of webs and limbs was something she should look into in the future. Just as she was finishing her notes and preparing to switch to another dimension, the Spider-Woman pulled her mask off.

No. The Spider- _Man_ pulled _his_ mask off.

Olivia slammed the button on the console, bile rising in her throat.

The third dimension she didn’t have to watch for long. There was Doctor Octopus, in the center of New York, fighting Spider-Man openly with long metallic limbs that looked far clunkier than her own. She didn’t have to listen to Peter’s voice to know which name he called out.

She never wanted to hear the name “Otto” again.

But that seemed to be the one repeating element. She saw more Spider-Men, younger and older versions, even a version that seemed to be a cat (presumably from the same dimension as the spider-pig). And all of them went by the same name. Otto. _Otto. OTTO._

How could this happen? Sure, there were infinite possibilities, but for _all_ of them to lack that particular trait of hers… It indicated one thing very clearly to her, one thing she had hoped to disprove with this experiment, but one thing that she clearly could not deny.

_She_ was the statistical outlier.

* * *

Miles had been hoping he wasn’t too late to destroy whatever villain’s contraption had started running this week. But he was-- for it had already been destroyed.

Doctor Octopus (there was a face he hadn’t expected to see) was in front of a large computer console, but rather than hard at work plotting and programming, she was sitting on the ground, trembling something ferocious. All four of her mechanical arms were currently embedded into the machine in front of her, debris scattered around the lab from the previous holes she had already punched before he arrived.

Miles’ Spider-Sense kicked up. Though the machine had been stopped from its main function, the energy still flowing to it would overload soon, taking out the lab and everything inside it. But Ock didn’t seem inclined to move on her own anytime soon. And if there was one thing he knew about Spider-Man, it was that he couldn’t stand by and let anyone die, even a villain like her.

Miles was prepared for the energetic and ferocious Doc Ock to put up a fight the second he announced his presence, so it was almost worrying that she stayed entirely still as he grabbed her and webbed out of the building. It was even more worrying as she remained still and silent as the PDNY arrived and took her into custody, no trace of the frightening woman who had chased him and Peter during their first meeting.

Miles didn’t know what she had been up to in that lab, but she must not have liked the outcome very much.

**Author's Note:**

> The only other female version of Ock I could find on the Marvel wiki (who was actually a version of Ock rather than his successor) was Octavia Otto, who came from a dimension in which it appears everyone was flipped (ie, she was fighting Spider-Woman). Since Olivia's dimension is obviously not like that, it's my headcanon that she's trans. And then I imagined her seeing all her alternate selves (since the multiverse was her focus) and I had to write this.
> 
> In other news, I may write another Livmay fic (a chapter one this time) soon that delves into all my ideas for her backstory, but no promises. If you have any thoughts or ideas on this (or what warning tags I should put on this fic, because really), I'd love to hear them in the comments! Thanks for reading!


End file.
